Gardening – Lee Reich

THE TRUTH ABOUT RAIN

July 24, 2025/3 Comments/in Gardening/by Lee Reich

Plenty of Water Here. Really?

During an entire year, a meager three-hundredths of an inch of rain falls on Arica, Chile, yet halfway across the Pacific in the Hawaiian Archipelago, Mount Waialeale receives a sopping 460 inches. The climate on my farmden, and throughout northeastern U.S., is more or less congenial for growing plants — at least those plants we enjoy in our gardens.

We average about four inches of rainfall each month throughout the year, and this amount complements nicely the inch depth of water per week recommended for most garden plants. Read more

TWO FREE PRUNING TOOLS!

July 16, 2025/9 Comments/in Gardening, Tools/by Lee Reich

Tool Number One

Right now, I have before me a most useful pruning tool, two different kinds of pruning tools, in fact. And they are always with me, even when I sleep. Let’s start with the first: my hands.

I use my hands to rip unwanted stems from plants. This seemingly brutal method of pruning can sometimes do a better job and leave the plant healthier than can a precision cut with pruning shears, even fancy pruning shears. Hand pruning is the best way to get rid of suckers, those overly exuberant, usually vertical stems.

On apple trees, watersprouts poking up along branches are not fruitful, at least not for a few years. Read more

CURE ALL OR SNAKE OIL?

July 9, 2025/3 Comments/in Gardening/by Lee Reich

Many Uses for Marigold

Gardeners who visit here frequently comment, upon seeing marigold plants growing in and at the foot of my vegetable beds, that I must have planted them for pest control. After all, marigolds are supposed to be one of the workhorses of biological pest control. Plant them and plant pests will be killed or — if they are lucky — merely repelled.

It’s an appealing concept: sunny plants that thwart pestilence and blight even as they brighten the garden with their blossoms. Marigolds greatest claim to pest control fame is their effect on nematodes, an effect documented in numerous scientific studies. Read more

Painting of "Man with a Hoe" Millet (1860)

HOE, HOE, HOE

July 2, 2025/2 Comments/in Gardening/by Lee Reich

“Cultivate”??

If I told you that I was stepping outside to “cultivate” my tomatoes, you’d perhaps think I was going out to pull off suckers and tie stems to their stakes. If I told you I was stepping outside to “cultivate” my garden, you’d perhaps imagine that I was going to attend to my tomatoes, perhaps also thin out excess corn plants, prune back my early blooming clematis, and . . . you get the picture. I’m going to take care of miscellaneous things in my garden.

I wouldn’t say I’m stepping outside to “cultivate” my meadow because a meadow doesn’t involve the intimate care needed by a vegetable, a flower garden, or fruit trees or shrubs.

But “cultivate,” when it comes to gardening, is rife with meanings. Read more

RAINY WEATHER: WHY WATER?

June 18, 2025/0 Comments/in Gardening/by Lee Reich

Prognastication, Nope

Who can predict the weather? If it happens to be raining cats and dogs as you read this, my words might make you want to pelt me with ripe tomatoes — if you had them yet. Still, I’ll say it again: Timely watering is the way too get the best plant growth from any plot of ground in any season.

Watering usually helps even in wet seasons because all the water that falls in such seasons is not available to plants. Roots need air to function, and a cat and dog rain temporarily drives all the air out of the ground. Roots start to breathe and function well again only after gravity has pulled excess water deeper into the ground. A timely watering will spur plant growth in drier periods between rains.

I’m not making a case for setting up elaborate irrigation systems to water every maple, marigold, lettuce, and lawngrass. (My blueberry bushes and my vegetables are the only plants that are watered regularly, here — as described in my book Weedless Gardening — with drip irrigation on a timer.) Read more

HAVE FAITH, WITH RESERVATIONS

June 11, 2025/0 Comments/in Gardening, Vegetables/by Lee Reich

Sprouts for Your Vegetables

Planting a seed is an act of faith. After all, what could seem more far-fetched than dropping a shrivelled, apparently lifeless speck of something into a hole in the ground, then expecting to return and find growing there a lush, green plant brimming with life. A lack of faith — or maybe it’s just impatience — is what drives some gardeners to set out transplants rather than sow seeds. Of course, plants such as tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants won’t ripen their fruits in due time if seeded outdoors when the soil is warm enough for germination.

MAY I BORROW YOUR LANDSCAPE?

May 21, 2025/0 Comments/in Gardening/by Lee Reich

No Work Garden Expansion

If you’re feeling that your garden or yard is too small, you can expand your horizons without buying another square inch of property, without even much work. Just borrow some landscape.

“Borrowed landscape” originally appeared in the 17th century Chinese garden treatise Yuanye; the technique was borrowed by the Japanese and shakkei, as borrowed landscape is known, has been frquently used in their gardens. But it can be employed in any garden style.

The idea is to incorporate some elements of the surrounding landscape into your landscape to create the feeling of greater space within your garden. You could reap a feeling of infinite space if that distant element is a mountain or ocean that stretches all the way out to the horizon. Read more

MORE PRUNING?

May 14, 2025/2 Comments/in Gardening/by Lee Reich

Showtime Again, Next Year

The main show is over, at least here on the farmden: Spring blooming shrubs and vines have strutted their stuff. With blossoms past, those plants are melding into other landscape greenery. You can’t turn your back on them, though; pruning now will encourage them into repeat performances next year and in years to come.

Many shrubs and vines renew themselves each year by sending up new stems at or near ground level. With age, these stems crowd each other, flower less profusely, and put fragrant or colorful blossoms beyond where they can best be seen or reached with your nose should you want to get close for an aromatic sniff as you walk past.

Lilac before its annual pruning

MY BRIEF AFFAIR

May 6, 2025/2 Comments/in Gardening, Pests, Vegetables/by Lee Reich

What Could Be Bad?

Like most brief affairs, this one ended without rancor. A friend had introduced me to garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata), our meeting coming at a time when I could look fondly upon any wild edible plant. That was many years ago, yet after a few years tensions between us escalated.

In retrospect, I can’t really understand the attraction I had for garlic mustard. True, the name was appealing: you would think that any plant combining the flavors of garlic and mustard would have elicited affection that would linger, even grow, over the years.Despite the enticing name, I can now reminisce with a clear mind and remember finding the taste ho-hum at best, biting at worst.

I PLANTED MY FIRST SEED

April 9, 2025/2 Comments/in Gardening/by Lee Reich

My Plant Stalled

Growing tomato plants from seed is fun, interesting, and, of course, useful. Perhaps even more fun and interesting is growing a tree from seed. And then you also get a perspective in a potentially long span of time, and a chance to reflect on your place in that spectrum.

I planted my first tree seed many, many years ago, when I had just dipped my toes into the wide ocean of gardening. I was living in a small apartment and, having just finished eating a McIntosh apple, took a look at what was left. A core and seeds. I removed one seed from the core and buried it an inch deep in a 6-inch diameter flower pot, then gave it a drink and moved it to a sunny window.

Not my first apple seedlings, but my hackberry seedlings in 2013

To my delight, the seed actually sprouted and grew to a few inches height. My vision of an old apple tree sometime offering me bushels of fruit stalled when growth of the seedling also stalled, still at a few inches height. And stayed there. Read more